Kim, 70, died on Dec. 17 of exhaustion brought on by a
sudden illness, the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Euro area finance ministers are seeking to meet a self-imposed
deadline for drawing additional aid to the debt crisis through
the International Monetary Fund. France sold 7 billion euros
($9.1 billion) of bills after Fitch Ratings last week reduced
its outlook for the nation’s credit grade to negative from
stable.

“Asia is under pressure this morning on the death of the
North Korean leader Kim Jong II,” Leonid Slipchenko, a senior
analyst at UralSib Financial Corp., wrote in a report e-mailed
today. “The euro zone will also be on center stage this week,
as European sovereign debt problems continue to dominate the
markets.”

Market Merger

The Micex Stock Exchange merged with the RTS Exchange on
Dec. 16 and will maintain their separate indexes in Moscow, with
the so-called main market to trade ruble-denominated Micex-listed equities and bonds and the standard market to buy and
sell RTS-listed company stock denominated in dollars, according
to a statement on the RTS website. As many as 10 companies are
considering initial public offerings in Russia, Ruben
Aganbegyan, president of the Micex-RTS, said in an interview.

The combined company was valued at $4.5 billion ahead of
the merger, according to an emailed statement from Micex today.
The bourse is targeting an IPO in 2013, it added.

“Russia still needs to address the most important issue of
building a much bigger pool of domestic capital,” Chris Weafer,
chief strategist at Troika Dialog in Moscow, wrote in a report
today. “Only then will the volatility fall, the valuation
discount with emerging-market peers close and more issuers look
to raise money at home rather than on international bourses.”

Selective Buying

The Micex lost 18 percent this year and trades at 4.7 times
estimated earnings, the cheapest valuation among major emerging
markets. That compares with 10 times for Brazil’s Bovespa index,
10.6 for the Shanghai Composite Index and 13.7 in the case of
the BSE India Sensitive Index, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg.

Now is a good time to be “selectively buying assets” Ian
McCall, managing partner at Quesnell Capital SA, an emerging
markets investment adviser in Geneva that manages 100 million
Swiss francs ($107 million) of assets, including Russian stocks,
said by phone on Dec. 16. “There’s value there for sure.”